Obituary commissioned by The Guardian. Completed 24 May 2009. Edited version published on
25 May 2009 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/roh-moo-hyun-obituary

Combative South Korean president who challenged the old elite

Aidan Foster-Carter

Roh Moo-hyun, who ended his life on Saturday aged 62, was a South Korean president who broke the mould – though in the end the mould broke him. Born in poverty, his tenure in the Blue House (2003-08) antagonized the Seoul elite and Washington while disappointing his fans. Dismay grew as a corruption scandal enveloped him, finally driving him to jump from a clifftop near his home early in the morning after leaving a suicide note on his computer.

Roh never lost his roots in Korea’s rural southeast. The youngest child of a poor farmer, his nickname was ‘stone bean’: small but tough. His first-grade teacher said he had many talents – above all in presenting his opinions. Unable to afford college, he worked on building sites while studying at night for South Korea’s formidable bar examination. Passing this in 1975 – a remarkable feat for a non-graduate – he was briefly a judge before practising as a lawyer. In 1971 he had married his childhood sweetheart Kwon Yang-sook, from the same area and background; her father was once jailed as pro-communist. They have a son and a daughter.

At first more upwardly mobile than political – with a comfortable tax practice, he joined the local yacht club – in 1980 Roh defended students tortured on trumped-up charges by Seoul’s then military dictators. By his own account, the sight of torn-out toenails radicalized him. Now specializing in human rights cases, he was briefly jailed in 1987: the year democracy was restored. Elected to the national assembly for the port city of Pusan, he gained national fame for sharply grilling generals and tycoons, in sessions broadcast live on television. Such irreverence struck a fresh note in a country still in fear of the military and in awe of elites.

A spell in the wilderness followed. When his mentor Kim Young-sam allied with generals to win the presidency in 1993, a disgusted Roh threw in his lot with YS’s rival, the long-time dissident Kim Dae-jung. Regional antagonism between the southeast and DJ’s southwest made the latter a losing ticket in Pusan, but Roh doggedly ran and lost three times. His down to earth image as a principled if quixotic loser inspired his supporters to form Nosamo (We Love Roh), South Korea’s first ever political fan club, which blossomed as the Internet grew.

Kim Dae-jung won the presidency in 1997, and Roh served briefly as fisheries minister. Yet he was still a political outsider when the ruling party decided to choose its next candidate – South Korean presidents serve a single five-year term – via the country’s first ever primaries. To elite consternation, a bandwagon began to roll, delivering Roh the nomination. Insiders tried to deselect him; at one point he trailed third in the polls. But on the day in December 2002 he narrowly defeated a stiff conservative former judge. Koreans wanted a change.

In office Roh proved divisive. The establishment hated him, and he them. Shunning and at one point suing the conservative print dailies, Roh favoured left-leaning online news sites like Ohmynews. He promoted the radical 386 generation: in their 30s, at college in the 1980s and born in the 1960s. Populist and anti-American, the 386ers sounded a new assertive note. Roh himself, who unusually had never visited the US before (though he wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln), riposted by saying he did not see why he should go just to kowtow.

But the left were soon disappointed. Roh sent troops to Iraq, and in 2007 signed a free trade accord (still unratified) with the US, in the teeth of fierce street protests: a Korean speciality. If Iraq was a sop to Bush so that Roh could continue a ‘sunshine’ policy of engaging North Korea, the FTA seemed a real change of heart, rejecting the old ‘fortress Korea’ mentality.

Policies apart, Roh’s style grated. His mouth tended to run away with him. This spontaneity, refreshing at first, was often combative, could be crude and lacked gravitas. He admitted that on official trips – including the first ever Korean state visit to the UK, in 2004 – he packed ramyon (instant noodles); all that foreign nosh was uncongenial. Having no English small-talk was a problem too: by the time you beckoned the interpreter, the moment had passed.

At home Roh was forever upsetting applecarts, not least his own. Within weeks of becoming president, he wondered aloud if he was up to the job and suggested a referendum on his rule. In March 2004 he got one – as the first South Korean president ever to be impeached, which a simple apology could have prevented. A popular backlash in his favour then gave his party a majority in elections in April. In May the Constitutional Court threw out his impeachment. Roh, and Korea, bounced back from an unnerving roller-coaster largely of his own making.

Thus it continued. In 2007 as his term drew to a close, after years of antagonizing the Right on issues ranging from collaboration with past dictatorships to restricting elite schools, Roh startled friend and foe alike by proposing an alliance with the conservative opposition. The latter rejected this. Their candidate Lee Myung-bak, a formaer Hyundai CEO and mayor of Seoul, won a landslide in December 2007’s presidential election – over a centre-left which by then was desperate to distance itself from Roh, seen as a bungling, mercurial liability.

Still, at least he was clean. Scorning Seoul, Roh retired to a new house in his native village, where he grew organic rice, drank with the locals and blogged. In recent months this idyll darkened. A bribery scandal involving a Pusan shoemaker (a local supplier to Nike), Park Yeon-cha, was said to implicate Roh’s family. On April 7 Roh admitted his wife took money from Park to settle a debt. On April 30 he was driven to Seoul for a grilling that lasted till the small hours. Amid rumours from a suspiciously leaky prosecutor’s office – political bias is alleged – that Roh solicited $6 million from Park, he feared indictment, humiliation and jail. His death has halted this, sparing his family; but the full truth may now never be known.

“Discard me”, Roh wrote in his blog. For all his flaws, future history will judge him less harshly than that. His very weakness helped democracy. No emperor, he delegated and did not abuse power markedly. The economy grew at a fair clip, even if he had no clear vision for it – except a failed bid to move the capital from Seoul so as to promote regional equality.

His finest hour came in October 2007. Solemnly walking across the Demilitarized Zone, he drove on Pyongyang for a summit with Kim Jong-il whose results belied low expectations, launching wide-ranging business deals with the North. For a few months the two Koreas met daily and cooperated concretely. Roh’s successor Lee junked all this, just as in 2003 George W Bush brusquely ditched Bill Clinton’s outreach to North Korea. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. Perhaps sunshine was appeasement, but does anyone have a better idea?

An odd mix of Candide-like innocence and often misplaced guile, Roh Moo-hyun could be a fool – and a hypocrite if he was not after all squeaky-clean. Yet he was a breath of fresh air, and his street-smart instincts did not lack vision. His end is a tragedy, for him and for Korea.

Roh Moo-hyun, politician; born August 6 1946, died May 23 2009.